There are a lot more intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate commenters than there are bloggers. The troll tactic of spamming the comments sections with stupidity to drive off lurkers recognizes the force multiplier effect good commenters have on the effectiveness of a blog. Some of the best thinking on the internet is in comments, but it is time consuming and usually aggravating to pick through the horse apples in hopes of discovering the odd undigested corn kernel. Read cfbleachers’ comment of Oct 4, 2008 – 5:52 am on Kyle-Anne Shiver’s piece at Pajamas Media. It’s about political warfare, propaganda, counterpropaganda, old media bias, and other subjects often discussed on this blog.

There is a frightening aspect of intimidation, repression, suppression of facts, and deconstruction of evidence that surrounds the campaign …and, indeed the life…of the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

The standard “hard bounceback” response to almost any inquiry into the vetting process of the almost completely unknown history of the Senator from Illinois…is a mixture of empty platitudes, non-answer denials, accusations of racism, threats of retaliation and revenge and secreting of documentation.

The Democratic Party Media (DPM) operatives have engaged in a nearly universal conspiracy of silence…which is only broken to ridicule, lampoon and deride those with the hubris to merely make an inquiry into the murky associations and thuggery tactics of those associated with the Obama campaign. Anyone asking any questions about the Democratic candidate, are met with hurled epithets, slander, false accusations, false attributions, and suggestions that they are paranoid, Rovian Robots, or racist pigs.

But, they never answer the questions. The campaign has taken on a bizarre Nixonian flavor with enemy lists and carefully orchestrated “action orders” to take down anyone who disagrees.

This stinks of Soros and the vile little gremlins of the brown-shirted lefist variety at Move.on….who emulate their sugar daddy’s utter disregard for ethics and morality…while iron fisting socialism down the throat of and unwilling public body.

The conspiracy of silence extends to a new brand of leftism in our own land, much more aggressive and oppressive in tactics and now containing an “in your face” quality…in which truth, facts and news are subjective Machiavellian whims to be trifled with and bent, if necessary, to meet the “message”.

Fact finding is now a “distraction” from the “real” issues. Digging for the truth is met with an immediate “call to action” whereby all inquiries are shouted down by the Ayers Youth.

Public and university libraries conspire to shroud documents in layers of phony legal obstructions, while they stall, hinder and delay requests for freedom of review.

There is a brewing dark cloud rumbling and the conspiracy of silence calls down the thunder.

It is impossible to know at this moment in time, what is real, what is imagined, what is overblown and what is not…about the associations, beliefs, actions and intentions of the Democratic nominee. But a chill wind precedes the whole of it. Nancy Pelosi has proven to be an unstable hand at the helm of the Democratic ship, which anticipated smooth sailing to dominance over our body politic in all but the Supreme Court. And, the days ahead will certainly put total authoritarian dominance of even that body in play.

I’m always uncomfortable when one of the two parties has total dominance over all three branches of government. I’m especially concerned today. The “fairness doctrine” threat by Pelosi and her minions and lackeys…intending to bring back the halcyon days for liberals when they owned the “truth” in media lock, stock and barrel…and could infuse leftist propaganda without dissent virtually unfettered into the information stream. John Kerry in his inimitable dense manner, in essence blurted out to Charlie Gibson…”hey, you are supposed to be on OUR side”…removing the veil of pretense…that has all but been stripped bare in this election.

But, the weasels ripping flesh modus operandi of Soros and his thugs was most glaring and jarring…when turned against Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton. It became increasingly apparent and even more frightening to watch the spectacle…when used against a former Democratic nominee for vice-president, and a former Democratic first lady and candidate for first female Democrat running for the top of their ticket. Moral bankruptcy with an automatic stay provision on ethics ruled the day.

If we are to self-govern this land of ours, through representative government…we cannot do this with fauxtography, forged documents, photoshopped caricatures, libraries hiding evidence, …essentially a gang raped information stream. We can’t…it’s not open to serious or rational debate. The conspiracy of silence must be broken. Our ability to get facts upon which we make decisions about how we govern this land of ours…is a public trust.

Public institutions and certainly universities and public libraries are not free to disseminate information and evidence upon a political whim. That’s a violation of a public trust adherence to which should be sacrosanct.

Moreover, the dominant public information gathering places, television news, major metropolitan newspapers, radio, wire services, magazines, Hollywood, …which shape our views based upon the reliability of facts being separated from opinion…and more importantly, facts being separated from intentionally misleading screeds of a particular political persuasion…is a quasi public trust.

These trusts have been violated. In a manner and with a depth that is dangerous and at times, treasonous to our own country.

I have no idea about the eventual answers related to Sen. Obama’s lingering murky and shadowy past. I have no idea where he was born, or if that is a legitimate issue of discussion. It may not be.

I have no idea what influence Frank Marshall Davis had upon him, his radical professors at college, his attachment to Ayers, Dorhn, Klonsky, Wright, Pfleger, Sam Graham-Felsen, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Cynthia Miller, Jennifer Mason, Soros, Odinga, Massoud, Rezco, Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, Robert Malley, …all I do know is…there are enough smoldering embers of extremist radicalism touching his campfire …that no journalist of modest integrity could ignore with the resolve and steadfast silence that the DPM has shown en masse.

The DPM has shown a face of passive acquiescence toward the thuggery of shouting down principled dissent, but as character shallow as that is, it is there conspiracy of silence and refusal to engage in even asking the questions that has blackened their names for eternal condemnation. They won’t even ask the questions. They won’t work for the truth…they are so owned by the “message”.

Rev. Wright asked God to damn America. By way of conspiracy of silence by our 4th Estate and complicity in corrupting the process by which we govern, he may have gotten his wish.

Hollywood and the entertainment industry is a business focused on the bottom line. If people want Hollywood to produce a pro-victory film, or a pro-troop television series, they will have to demonstrate that it is economically viable.

Most of the anti-war films have taken a beating at the box office.

Brian DePalma’s ‘Redacted’ grossed $65,388, but cost $5million to make and
‘Home of the Brave’ only brought in $51,708 domestically.

To put that in perspective, JD made his documentaries for under $60,000–that is
the trip to Iraq and editing, audio studio, music, digital animations,
etc., EVERYTHING.

Action Hero Sock Puppet has been a troll at Blackfive going on two and a half years, tolerated because he served and in my humble opinion is thus afforded courtesy he would not otherwise receive.

one of the Trib’s investigative reporters, was embedded with the 1st Marine Division. Prine, 36, joined the Trib’s special-projects team in July 2000. His reporting on local heroin abuse has won state and local journalism awards. His 2002 special report on security lapses at chemical and nuclear-power plants was a finalist for the prestigious Oakes Awards and has been recognized by two journalism organizations — Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society of Environmental Journalists. He is a U.S. Marine veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and previously worked as a combat correspondent in Sierra Leone for the Christian Science Monitor.

An investigative journalist for a second-tier Main Stream Media outlet with significant military experience. Embedded with 1st MAR DIV, went to Baghdad with them. A cursory peek at what he reported five years ago looks fairly decent to me. I first heard of him the other night when he came on PBS. It was an old rerun, but it was new to me. He enlisted in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and went back to Iraq as a shooter. Whatever douchebaggery he may or may not be guilty of, he has cred. Cred which he is attempting to trade on in bolstering the reputation of the Main Stream Media as purveyors of Strategic Communications pertaining to the United States Armed Forces and running down the effectiveness of New Media as purveyors of same.

Milblogs exist because millions of serving and former American military personnel and their family members and friends and supporters lost confidence in the objectivity of the MSM. The anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-military BIAS of the American MSM, the objectively pro-insurgent tone of most of the reporting, and an intolerable predisposition on the part of the press to believe the worst about those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan created a demand for

real experiences flying unfiltered to anyone with an Internet connection and an interest.*

The unfiltered part was the basis of milblog credibility.

In a nation with decreasing numbers of citizens who have any personal connection to the military, blogs serve to educate those who are interested about the values, beliefs, and humanity of those in uniform. To augment the efforts of Army journalists, blogs offer readers a soldier’s-eye report that seems more credible – straight from the trenches, complete with interesting anecdotes and colorful descriptions – a perspective that is clearly unsanitized by Army leadership.17 According to one retired officer, “The best blogs offer a taste of reality of Iraq or Afghanistan that the news media rarely capture. And they’re often a grand, irreverent hoot.”18

MAJ Robbins understood the value of hundreds of unofficial part-time PSYOPers contributing to the effort to engage the domestic target audience’s attention, interest and support for the mission and the people carrying it out. But those days are gone. PA, IA, and OPSEC triumphed over PO. Active duty bloggers face ever more restrictions. Blogs are being blocked from government computers. Milbloggers, potential milbloggers, and commenters are being herded into pass-word protected, IA-approved Army Knowledge Online cyber ghettoes inaccessible to the unsponsored.

Regime change in Washington is going to reverberate throughout the blogosphere for as long as it lasts, which may not be long.

Interpreting milspeak to the general public, encouraging support for the troops and their missions, cheerleading, disseminating good news, bolstering the people’s will to endeavor to persevere, pushing back against those who would blow up recruiting stations, vandalize memorials, desecrate funerals, and spit on soldiers is a campaign in the War of Ideas that will continue after the election, but it will have to be fought by the only force left that is free to speak, while they still are free to speak.

MSM War Correspondent vs. Virtual Warlord. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder.

There is always somebody out in cyberspace who knows more about whatever subject is being discussed, reported, shopped around, sold, lied about, misrepresented, underestimated, or damned with faint praise than the people who brought it up. Whoever would attempt to influence the netizen’s perception about anything must consider the rube’s new power to access and disseminate oppositional information embarrassing to the originators.

the Internet, and in particular the blogosphere, has become an unofficial part of the news cycle. It’s importance at fact checking has now reached the stage where it is relevant to ask whether with the availability of so many digital image and audio manipulation techniques to fraudsters any meaningful ‘news’ is still possible without the accompanying near real-time analysis by Internet pundits. The day-after scrutiny has become so much a part of the ‘news’ generation process that news would be significantly less reliable without it. Whether the task consists in noticing that Barack Obama is shaded too black in a Hillary Clinton campaign ad or observing that ‘missiles’ found in Afghan ruins are really unexploded 155 mm artillery shells, no major news story is accepted out of the box any more until it is prodded, poked and assayed.

You might think a guy with a handle like mine would perk up over photographs of unexploded howitzer projectiles being represented as American missiles, and you’d be right. I had just returned from that theater back then. I was in Iraq when PVT Beauchamp’s hoax was debunked by people who smelled the bull shit and kept digging until they uncovered the cow pie. I’m grateful that they did. Beauchamp would have been the Lynndie England of the Surge otherwise. Bloggers acted as a force multiplier for The Good Guys on that and many other stories.

Some of us will never accept the word of a Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather at face value again. That train has left the station. Not only are we not buying what they’re selling anymore, we’re killing the demand for their product.

There are only a few courses of action available when it comes to addressing cyber threats. The first is the maintenance of the status quo: victim hood. Note that organizations that deal with cyber threats all have “response” in their name and you will realize that INFOSEC today is almost entirely reactive.

The second course of action has the government building the capability to bring law and order to cyberspace. This is unlikely if for no other reason than the stateless nature of the Internet precludes exercising dominion by any single nation. Consider that the Department of Justice’s cyber crime budget for 2005 was projected to be roughly $300 million dollars and a similar program within Homeland Security’s was much less.6 Contrast cyber defense spending to the tens of billions of dollars malicious actors are estimated to be making and you will understand the priority cyber threat has on Capitol Hill.7

The final option – outsourcing – has private-sector enterprises performing the tasks necessary to defend national interests online. Unlike the government the private sector has ample resources and a strong motivation to succeed: reducing threats means less risk which translates into higher profits.

I’m loving this. Read the whole thing. Non-state actors are eating our lunch in the infowar and the regularly constituted authorities of my beloved Westphalian nation-state have neither the mandate, the resources, nor the political will to capture or destroy enemies in cyberspace. Those of us who still think America and Americans and American minds and American intellectual, virtual, and physical property are still worth protecting are rapidly realizing the limits of .gov.

I’m old. Meatspace analogies make sense to me. The Bad Guys in cyberspace are numerous but most of them don’t work well together. Cyberspace is Major Dundee meets The Road Warrior. Rustlers, horse thieves, and raiders under every rock, plus invading armies. Irregulars, a cyber Magnificent Seven, can do more than cavalry that never comes.

You don’t have to sit around and bitch that Bush hasn’t asked you to buy War Bonds or conserve food. Mobilize yourself. You don’t even have to get off your ass.